“Did you know you could go online with a library account and “Ask a Librarian”? Ask them anything. Any time of day. There are reference librarians all over the world standing by to answer your most random, burning questions. With any luck, they’ll have knuckle tattoos and beehive hairdos like the Olympia branch’s badass bibliognosts. Then there’s the Dewey Decimal System. Parker Posey made it hip in the ‘90s flick Party Girl. The Olympia librarians are doing the work to make the library the kind of place where rock and roll and spontaneous bursts of learning happen. The Olympia library has events like Anti-Valentines Day party for teens; story time for four year olds with a book whose protagonist is a transgender child; typewriter celebrations; all ages rock shows in the atrium; death row surviving activists; zines made in collaboration with punk rockers and senior citizens; authors who write about secret POW camps in WWII-era Minnesota; and that’s just the beginning. It’s millennia away from the oldest known library, which dates back to a 1200 BCE Syrian palace library. Yeah—that information came from a library.” (via Olympia Power & Light)